


Dancers at the End of Time

by Tiny_Dragongirl



Category: Arcadia - Stoppard
Genre: AU, Dancing, F/M, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2014-07-09
Packaged: 2018-02-08 04:45:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1927101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiny_Dragongirl/pseuds/Tiny_Dragongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"...we will be alone, on an empty shore."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dancers at the End of Time

**Author's Note:**

> Arcadia is perfect and there is no possible way I can add anything to Stoppard's masterpiece... but this one tickled my mind. I thank Tom Stoppard and Michael Moorcock. And my favourite (and only) beta, the Giraffe.

They are standing on an empty shore, time rippling below their feet like the sea.

‘Where are we?’ Septimus asks.

‘We are at the end of time, where entropy is the king and the universe has begun collapsing upon itself.’

‘And what is _this_?’

‘This is the sound of time ending,’ Thomasina answers, giving him a perky smile, ‘and apparently, this also happens to be the tune of a waltz.’

_He was working on the algorithm when a wardrobe appeared in the hermitage with a whooshing sound and Thomasina Coverly stepped out of it._

_Well, these two things were quite impossible, thus they shouldn’t have happened._

_‘Good morning, Septimus.’_

_‘You are dead.’_

_Thomasina cocked her head. ‘It is considered very impolite to greet someone in such a manner, even if you used to be her tutor.’_

_‘You are dead, my lady.’_

_‘Septimus, you can believe in the after, but not in the afterlife.’_

_‘Pardon, my lady?’_

_‘I am not dead. I never was because I escaped the fire in my wardrobe which also happened to be a time-machine. Maybe I should mention that it likes to change its form – once it was a dressing-up box, for example. I am still learning to drive it, so this is why I didn’t come earlier, though I would have liked to. I could only hope that you didn’t grow gray before I could find my way back to Sidley Park.’_

_Septimus seemed to think about what he was just told for a while. ‘Well, they all say I’m insane.’ Thomasina sighed. ‘I’m sorry, my lady, but you hardly look older than seventeen.’_

_‘Time is a bit different when you are in possession of a time-machine. But I_ am _older. A bit.’_

_Septimus absent-mindedly stroked Plautus’ back. He grew older, too. A bit. But not nearly as old as he felt since that night – the eve of Thomasina’s seventeenth birthday._

_‘So? Will you come this time, Septimus?’_

_‘But the diagram...’_

_‘The diagram can wait. We have time now, you know. I can take you to the library of Alexandria... before it was burnt down, of course. I can arrange a rendezvous with Shakespeare for you. Or Newton. Actually, I am quite determined to do the latter. And you must come with me.’_

_Septimus considered his options: either he is insane, having the most fantastic dream of his life, or there is a real time-machine in the middle of the hermitage. ‘I will.’_

_Thomasina smiled, ‘Goody!’_

Later – or earlier, since this is the end of time, after all – they will visit the library of Alexandria and many other places, read all the lost plays, meet Shakespeare, Newton and the others, find the lost mathematical discoveries, and iterate every algorithm in the universe.

But now, between the dust and debris of the time left, they are dancing.


End file.
